cipients from working is their fear of losing health insurance coverage. According to one study, making generous health insurance benefits available to all female workers would raise the employment rate of all heads of family’s 16 percentage points and reduce TAFN caseloads by 20 to 25 percent (Sherman et al., 1998).The Cooperation RequirementUnderlying the cooperation requirements are assumptions of noncooperation, irresponsibility, and immorality. Federal welfare reform bills have focused on parental responsibility in hopes of child support reimbursing welfare costs. The government also offers an incentive to the state in the form of bonuses for reducing the “illegitimacy ratio” (Rose 2000). An increasing number of women of all races and income levels are choosing to have children outside of marriage. Instead of policies acknowledging the changing lifestyles in society and creating social policies that would provide assistance to all types of families, welfare recipients have been made the target of punitive and problematic policies (Rose 2000). The stern sanction for failure to comply with the requirement assumes that mothers are not telling the truth or that they are deliberately with holding information about the father. Women are required to provide this information before they would be considered eligible to receive benefits (Cahn 1997).This has transformed welfare into a condemnation of the mother’s morality, rather than a program for meeting the needs of children. The cooperation requirement is simply another example of an attempt to impose morality on women. Women must meet certain standards of responsibility not just how much she must report, but also in the behavior she is reporting. There seems to be no understanding of the loss of dignity that accompanies questions regarding the woman’s sexual history. Many states have developed paternity questionnaires that ask about sexual activit...
